Second day of farmer interviews in Kenya

Today, we did a second row of interviews in Emru Kenya, trying to understand how farmers cope with climate change.

We interviewed Ruth, a widow who was looking after her grandchildren, trying to find inventive ways to adapt to the shorter rainy season. I told her my first girlfriend was called Ruth too. She teased me "You should have married her, why did you not?".



I felt privileged to spend several hours with Celeste, with a blessed age of 88, and his wife Julia. They proudly welcomed us in the warmth of their farm, the largest I have seen so far. "I inherited nothing. Everything you see here, we worked for hard, with our bare hands", Celeste said.



And we had another day on the fields. Women are forming cooperative groups cultivating a common piece of land. As we arrived, they were sowing potatoes.











Some of them proudly showed a harvest of sweet potatoes, as one of their ways to adapt to the frequent droughts. They told us that root vegetables were far more resistant to the dry spells than other crops like maize or beans...